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Qunari Tales
From the Qun Long ago, the Ashkaari lived in a great city by the sea. Wealth and prosperity shone upon the city like sunlight, and still its people grumbled in discontent. The Ashkaari walked the streets of his home and saw that all around him were signs of genius: triumphs of architecture, artistic masterpieces, the palaces of wealthy merchants, libraries, and concert halls. But he also saw signs of misery: the poor, sick, lost, frightened, and the hopeless. And the Ashkaari asked himself, "How can one people be both wise and ignorant, great and ruined, triumphant and despairing?" So the Ashkaari left the land of his birth, seeking out other cities and nations, looking for a people who had found wisdom enough to end hopelessness and despair. He wandered for many years through empires filled with palaces and gardens, but in every nation of the wise, the great, and the mighty, he found the forgotten, the abandoned, and the poor. Finally he came to a vast desert, a wasteland of bare rock clawing at the empty sky, where he took shelter in the shadow of a towering rock, and resolved to meditate until he found his answer or perished. Many days passed, until one night, as he gazed out from the shadow of the rocks, he saw the lifeless desert awaken. A hundred thousand locusts hatched from the barren ground, and as one, they turned south, a single wave of moving earth. The Ashkaari rose and followed in their wake: a path of devastation miles wide, the once verdant land turned to waste. And the Ashkaari's eyes were opened. Existence is a choice. There is no chaos in the world, only complexity. Knowledge of the complex is wisdom. From wisdom of the world comes wisdom of the self. Mastery of the self is mastery of the world. Loss of the self is the source of suffering. Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it. It is in our own power to create the world, or destroy it. And the Ashkaari went forth to his people. -- An excerpt from the Qun, Canto 1 Asit Tal-Eb When the Ashkaari looked upon the destruction wrought by locusts, He saw at last the order in the world. A plague must cause suffering for as long as it endures, Earthquakes must shatter the land. They are bound by their being. Asit tal-eb. It is to be. For the world and the self are one. Existence is a choice. A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. It is a choice, and we can refuse it. A Tale on Mages An Ashkaari walked among the fields once, observing the laborers at work. Flax bloomed all around him, the color of still water. The air rippled like a curtain. As he stopped to examine a blossom, a bee stung him on the hand. The Ashkaari turned to the laborer for aid, and noticed for the first time the heavy gloves and coat she wore. As she tended to him, the Ashkaari asked why she was dressed so in such stifling heat. "To avoid your fate," she replied. "But there are many thousands of bees here," the Ashkaari said to her, "and only one stung me. Surely your caution is unwarranted." "The stinger is always a surprise," agreed the laborer. "But so is the bee that simply passes one by." A Tale on Wisdom A great Ashkaari during his travels came upon a village in the desert. There, he found the houses crumbling. The earth so dry and dead that people tied themselves to each other for fear a strong wind would carry the ground out from under their feet. Nothing grew there except the bitter memory of gardens. The Ashkaari stopped the first man he saw, and asked, "What happened here?" "Drought came. And the world changed from prosperity to ruin," the man told him. "Change it back," the Ashkaari replied. The villager became angry then, believing the Ashkaari mocked him, for no-one could simply change the world on a whim. To which the Ashkaari answered, "Then change yourself. You make your own world." Category:Lore Category:Qunari Lore